Monthly Archives: November 2016

Low-Key Halloween (or A Work In Progress)

Posted on November 2, 2016 | 1 comment

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, but this past Halloween I was feeling a bit down. While my stomach was pretty much completely better by then, I was still feeling off and the night of my friend’s Halloween party I was pretty exhausted. But even though I was feeling not myself, I wasn’t going to miss what I knew would be an epic Halloween party!

The party was held on Saturday night (so most people didn’t have to work the next morning) and originally I thought I would have to work that night before the party. Since that’s what I though my schedule was like, I planned a costume that would be easy to do going from work. But then the week before, I found out I wasn’t needed anymore that day, so I had all the time I wanted to get ready for the party. I debated changing my costume, but I decided to go with my original idea.

I saw an idea for this costume online, but I changed it up a bit to make it my own. But all it took was some caution construction tape and a hard hat to turn me into a work in progress! It’s not my best costume, but it made me happy and I liked that it wasn’t something that was obvious right away. Plus, I felt cute and that is so important when you aren’t feeling totally like yourself.

halloween-costume

Every year, Marie and Chris make their parties bigger and better. They said that they were going to tone things down a bit this year, but clearly that plan went out the window! As soon as I got to the party, I saw that they turned their back patio area into a huge carnival tent!

circus-tent

Inside of the tent, they had different little rooms set up with seating and lots of old carnival posters.

in-the-tent

And they had a photo set up with a stage advertising a freak show!

freak-show

It was incredible! They put months of work into the party and I know all of us are so grateful that they love to host and do these insane parties! And none of us expected them to go as big as they did this year, so I think everyone was extra surprised when they saw all the work in the backyard.

Because I was feeling a bit low, I spent most of my time sitting down and talking with friends. But that was perfectly fine with me. We got to have a lot of fun conversation about our costumes, we discussed politics (which I love because we can have a polite debate), and several people asked me how I was doing and what was going on with my liver.

And as always, they had amazing food at the party. Most of it was stuff that I knew I shouldn’t have, so I tried to eat before going to the party. But fortunately someone made meatloaf with mashed potatoes on top (it almost looked like a cake) so I was able to eat something and feel like I wasn’t missing out on too much.

I really wanted to be more social than I was especially since there were friends there that I hadn’t seen in a while, but after being at the party for about an hour or so I started to feel a bit worse. I took it easy and tried to relax while sitting down and that helped the odd feeling go away. But I also knew it as a sign that this wasn’t going to be a party that I was going to be at for as long as I would have liked.

I ended up leaving around 10pm (I had been there about 3 hours) and unfortunately I ended up missing the costume contest. But everyone else there had such incredible costumes that I knew there was no way I was going to win or place, so I was ok missing it. I’m just glad that I got to be there for a few hours to see my friends and the super creative costumes that they made!

It was a low-key Halloween party, but it was perfect with me. And as far as what I did on the actual day of Halloween, that will be tomorrow’s post!

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Almost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November)

Posted on November 1, 2016 | 2 comments

I’m on to my 11th monthly challenge! I’m still so happy that I have my Spark Planner this year (and I already ordered my Volt Planner for next year) and while it’s not always easy to think up of monthly challenges I know they are good for me. But before I talk about my challenge for this month, I want to recap my October challenge.

I had decided that creating daily to-do lists would be a great challenge and I really though that they would help me stay as productive as possible. And at first, they were working well for me so I wouldn’t forget random things that I knew I needed to get done that day. Also, once something it written down I feel obligated to get it done. The first few days were great to remember weird things that aren’t a part of my normal day that needed to be done.

But after that, I discovered that these to-do lists really weren’t changing that much from day-to-day. I’m pretty set in my schedule most days (I’m still working on scheduling my afternoons better, but that’s another issue) so I was just writing the same thing each day. Those lists ended up being something that seemed more like an obligation that I had to do to complete the challenge instead of something that helped me. I don’t love that I didn’t have the best experience with this challenge, but I guess I had to do the challenge to find that out.

I still think that writing out a to-do list on my busy days is a great idea. There are times that I have a bunch of random things I need to get done and I don’t want to forget anything. So those lists can help me remember things that I can easy forget. But to do it every single day isn’t looking like being the best use of my time or focus. Toward the end of the month, I even started to get out of the habit of looking at what I had written so I was starting to forget what I had planned. But I tried and that’s all I can do.

Even though I’m not continuing with the challenge I had done last month, I’m excited about the challenge that I’m doing this month. In the past, I had no issues with drinking enough water. I actually had issues with drinking too much water so I started to track water to make sure I wasn’t drinking too much. But I’ve noticed lately that there can be days where I only drink half of what I know I really need to drink for the day.

So my challenge for November will be to drink at least 80 oz of water every day. I have a tumbler that I drink out of at home that is 24 oz and my workout water bottle is 20 oz. So my plan is to drink 4 full tumblers or water bottles a day. That will get me a bit more than 80 oz a day, but it won’t be too much water either. On the days that I seem to be drinking water endlessly, I do try to keep it under 100 oz of water, but if I go over that by a bit it’s not dangerous. When I used to drink too much, it would be more like 200 oz of water or more in a day.

I used to think that since I had issues with drinking too much water that I’d never have an issue with drinking enough. But I think that thinking made me a bit lazy and got me to where I’m not tracking water or making sure I’m getting enough. And with all the random health issues I have, drinking enough water is important. So I’m glad that I’ll be focusing on it this month so I can get back on track and help to my hydration a non-issue with my health.

I’m looking at how to best track water in my planner. I’m thinking maybe checkmarks or making some stickers at home so I can mark each glass down. I know it will be easy to forget if a glass of water is my 2nd or 3rd for the day, so I want to make this as error free as possible. But no matter what, I know that this is going to be a very positive step for me and my health so that I can focus on more important things regarding my health.

Almost a full year of monthly challenges is done! I feel like I’m going to have to do something huge for my December challenge (originally that was going to be my yoga class a day challenge, but I’ve already accomplished that!). Fortunately, I’ve got an entire month to decide what December will be! Then after that, it will be an entirely new year of monthly challenges to take on!

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